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The Vortex audio accelerator chipset line from Aureal Semiconductor was designed to improve performance of their then-popular A3D audio technology. The first member of the line, the Vortex AU8820, was announced on July 14, 1997 [1], and was used in by a number of sound card manufacturers, like Yamaha and Turtle Beach. After Aureal's release of A3D 2.0, the Vortex AU8830 (known as the Vortex 2) was announced on August 6, 1998 [2]. The Vortex 2 chipset won numerous industry awards, and was used among other places in the Diamond Monster Sound MX300, which achieved near-cult status with audiophiles and gamers for the high quality of its positional audio.
Near the end of Aureal's existence, they released a Vortex Advantage budget sound card aimed at systems integrators, which ran on the Vortex AU8810 chipset [3].
All Vortex soundcards are still functional with latest Windows 2000/Windows XP drivers in Windows Vista and Windows 7 (32 bit editions only).